New Staff – Welcome to Your Library Service

We would like to make sure you have the Library information you need to support your students and for your own work and research.   

If you would like a 1:1 Library induction or further information, please contact your Liaison Librarian: 

Faculty of Arts, Business & Social Sciences: Tom Hicks  |  Faculty of Education, Health and Wellbeing: Sue Davidson and Liz Howell |  Faculty of Science and Engineering: Mark Williams  |  Team e-mail: LISLiaison@wlv.ac.uk  

The Library

Our Library homepage can be found at www.wlv.ac.uk/lib and students can get support in the Library or via our online chat service, Library Assist.  Assist is staffed 24 hours a day and queries are referred if they cannot be answered immediately.  Please try out the Assist service yourself for quick enquiries.  Help for students is also available from our Skills for Learning team – please see below. 

Finding Information

A search in LibrarySearch will find ebooks, print books, e-journal articles, online newspaper articles and more on your topic.  Staff and students should refer to our Subject Resources pages to locate subject specific databases, including full-text journal databases.  There is also an A-Z of databases.  If we don’t have an article you need, you can request a copy via inter-library loan and it will be delivered to you electronically.  Books can also be requested via the inter-library loan service, for collection from our Libraries. 

Referencing & Reference Management

University approved guidance for referencing can be found online at Cite them Right, which includes a wealth of examples for Harvard Referencing and for other referencing systems (e.g. Oxford, APA) for courses where their use has been agreed in-Faculty. Our referencing pages offer additional quick guides which can be downloaded. When carrying out literature searches, you or your students my find it useful to manage your references using RefWorks.  Set up an account using your University email address; get started using this workbook: LS138 Guide to New RefWorks 2021 PDF. 

Skills for Learning

Please go to our webpages to explore our Skills for Learning offer for students on subjects such as academic writing, referencing, critical thinking and presentation skills.  Workshops are delivered online via Canvas – students need to book a place on a workshop.  An on-campus drop-in service is available 11am – 2pm (check webpage for details). Appointments can also be requested via contact us. All students are signed up to the Canvas course Skills for Learning – Introduction to Academic Study Skills, which includes videos and interactive content. 

Student Library Induction

Library inductions can be delivered to your student cohorts in person or online, at the start of their course or after they have settled in.  Updates can also be provided for returning students. Please contact your Liaison Librarian to agree dates and times. 

Module Support – Skills for Learning

Skills for Learning workshops can be delivered within your module teaching time (bookable via skills@wlv.libanswers.com) or you can link to our online Skills resources from Canvas.  For more information, including a list of topics covered by our workshops, see Developing your Students Study Skills.  To encourage individual students to take up Skills support, please consider using our Skills for Learning Referrals online form.

Module Support - Reading Lists

Module reading is provided to students through Leganto reading lists and should be reviewed annually by module leaders.  Students access those reading lists from their modules in Canvas - module leaders edit the lists by logging into Leganto. The Library aims to provide electronic copies of Essential reading, utilising digitisation (a legal scan) where appropriate. Support is available via Leganto - a Guide to Managing Your Reading Lists. See our Leganto pages for further information and email Leganto@wlv.ac.uk if you need assistance.

Module Support - Copyright

Guidance on staying within the law when creating online teaching materials is available via our Copyright pages. 

Supporting Your Research

We can also support you in your own academic inquiry and research.  Our Research webpages offer support e.g. for literature searching and open access publishing, including our institutional repository, WIRE.  Training can be provided for you and your colleagues, by request, on topics such as advanced literature searching, keeping up to date, open access, research data management, archival research and raising your research impact and profile. If you have published or are planning to publish, read the Open Access Publications Policy and consider taking advantage of one of our Gold Open Access deals.

Book Purchase Requests

If a book you require is not available in LibrarySearch, please consider an inter-library loan request before suggesting a book for purchase. You should request texts for a reading list by adding them in Leganto and submitted by clicking 'SEND LIST'. Please click here to make your book purchase request. Requests that meet the criteria in our Collection Management and Development Policy (PDF, 550K) will be purchased.